[MD] Ever redefining self

[Heather Perella]

Hello Gene,

     Gene said:  "Take the detective, trying to
re-create events passed on the clues available. They
fit what knowledge they have together into a coherent
and probable pattern, then work with that until some
new information doesn't fit. Then they tear it down
and re-organize it all over again. It's all about the
patterns we put our information in."

     Gene, this is the 'ever defining self'.  My wife
is a history teacher, and she says in history
interpretation changes history all the time.  In a
time in history when many interpretations, by
historians, are given for an event, the more
interpretations the more probable the event did happen
in such a such a way.  Then you have archaeology and
its' interpretation of the same historic event, which
could either support or disagree with such an event or
any details in the event.  Then somebody comes along
and finds a document from the time period that has a
different interpretation of an event, such as the
Judas papers found in Egypt in recent decades.  These
Judas writings have such a unique bend on the times of
Jesus, that any such analyzing of the event of Judas
in relationship to Jesus stirs controversy.  Then
science steps in when many question what evidence do
we have that the Judas papers are more correct than
the traditional perspective written in the books in
the King James version of the Bible.  For science to
be able to make these writings more highly probable
than the King James version would be difficult indeed,
and yet what if other documents surface, or even
something else found in the dirt that changes this
speculative event, more speculative by some than
others.  
     What is speculative is the digging into the
culture, thus, the beliefs, the norms, and values that
people have from time to time, and any historian when
looking into the past, yet, living in a different
culture in the present, these historians have to wrap
themselves in as much data and information of any past
event more and more to include 'how would these people
have viewed the world at the time?', 'how isolated or
in touch with other cultures where these people?' and
on and on.  What we know now is very different from
what people in past knew, and no matter how correct or
incorrect these people were, its' exactly how these
people thought and explained the world, if that's what
you want to know, that you have to except as fact for
their time and place on this earth.
     And then all changes in time, and to understand
this 'self', that has to endure changes, and with the
flood of information now a days then many changes does
the 'self' endure and must try to settle with
something static from time to time even thought
tomorrow that static pattern could be deemed incorrect
by the 'self' and all changes for the 'self' once
again.  This is how we blindly walk in this world just
doing and being at times and how hindsight, after
jumping into the abyss, is so near and dear to us and
how luck plays its' part from time to time, too. 
Thankfully, much of our basic survival skills have
been given the term wisdom over time and passed down
to us.  Yet, even what our parents have done, will not
work now a days. and that pressure, like all new
generations especially fastly innovated ones, has
become such a fact of life, not in some cultures past,
but it has in this culture.  So a historian must not
know a past event well and all the complexities of it,
but this culture, too, in order to know what
information is of this culture and make boundaries as
to not include something of this culture with a
culture of the past.
  So much goes into this 'ever redefining self'.

Thanks,
SA

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